


don't wake me for the end of the world (unless it's got good special effects)

by GuiltyAdonis



Series: Tarberry Tea [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Gen, Grognak the Barbarian, Institute Questline spoilers, Post-Main Quest, Sanctuary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-23
Updated: 2016-05-23
Packaged: 2018-06-10 04:19:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6939316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GuiltyAdonis/pseuds/GuiltyAdonis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which it is a truth universally acknowledged that a child in possession of a video camera will endeavor to create an entire film from scratch; or, in which Hollywood might be dead, but cinema is eternal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	don't wake me for the end of the world (unless it's got good special effects)

**Author's Note:**

> OH LOOK I'M NOT DEAD WHAT IS THIS. I've been sitting on this idea for a while—only shortly after the game came out, actually—but I only just got around to writing it. For some reason I seem to be in the minority with this, but I love baby Shaun a lot, okay, he is PRECIOUS and I must PROTECT HIM
> 
> This is intended to be the first of a series, but this is me we're talking about, so we'll see.
> 
> (the title comes from the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny. It seemed particularly fitting, for... obvious reasons.)

"Did you really get to see movies at the Institute?"

It's getting close to sunset, and most of Sanctuary's kids have congregated beneath a crumbling stretch of stone wall down by the river in the shadow of the Hilltop Hotel. Nat was the one who invited Shaun to come along, but he still feels like the odd one out and her question takes him by surprise.

"A couple," he says, once he's figured out that she's talking to him. "Most of them were actually pretty boring."

This admission is met with unanimous disbelief.

"How could they be boring? They're like, like, _comic books_ you can _watch_!" cries lanky tow-headed Caden, looking scandalized. "I wish I'd got to see a movie."

"What're they like?" Domino asks, wide-eyed. He's the youngest, scrawny and dark-skinned, with pale patches on his face and hands that Shaun's mom calls ' _vitiligo_ ' and the other kids call 'calico' if they like him and 'freaky' if they don't.

"Uh," says Shaun, blinking bewilderedly, "they're mostly just people talking in costumes. Sometimes there's kissing." He sticks out his tongue and a chorus of " _Ew_!"s goes up from the other kids.

"Imagine if there was a Grognak movie," Viola says, twisting a coiled-spring ringlet around her finger and staring wistfully out over the wrinkled brown surface of the water. "That'd be _wicked_."

Exit scrunches up her freckled nose and sighs. "Yeah," she says, "but nobody knows how to make them anymore. I reckon nobody've actually made one since before the War. I mean, have any've you beside Shaun ever even seen one?"

Mute, dejected head-shakes all around.

"Well," says Shaun slowly, an idea beginning to take shape in his mind, "I bet we could do it."

The other children react to this announcement with such immediate fervor that he might as well have said he could cry Nuka-Cola on command.

"What!"

"How?"

"Are you jokin' us?" Goose, the oldest and biggest, asks. He probably means to sound low and threatening, but his voice has recently started to break and so the effect is somewhat diminished.

"No, for serious!" Shaun has the group's full and undivided attention now, and he can't help the strange, sudden feeling of pride that it brings. "Mom helped me fix up this old camera the last time she was here. I could record it, an' Mr. Valentine would probably help put it onto a tape if I asked."

"You really think he would?"

"Sure, why not? He's nice."

Domino still looks doubtful. "He's kinda scary."

"Nah, he's real nice! Anyway, you asked and I told you."

"I could write it!" Nat leaps to her feet, hands waving pell-mell as her train of thought gains momentum. "I'll make my sister help. She totally owes me for sellin' the paper for her all the time."

"Oh, that's a _fab'lous_ idea! Nat, your sister's so cool." Caden looks a little starry-eyed. Shaun catches Nat's gaze and they gag at each other exaggeratedly. Caden's had a huge crush on Piper for, like, ever. It's so gross it's almost funny.

"Well, but who'll be in it?" says Viola. "The grown-ups're always busy or gone."

"We can do it!" Shaun says. It comes out with more enthusiasm than he'd intended. He's latched onto this idea and there's no getting off now. "Goose, you can be Grognak, right? You're the biggest, an' your Dad got you that plastic axe for your birthday last month, and you've got all the comics, you know them better'n anyone—"

"Yeah, Goose!" Domino punches his friend in the arm. "An' you can do that growly voice now'n everything! You'd be a perfect Grognak, it'll be great!"

"Yeah," Goose agrees, a grin slowly spreading across his spotty face. "Yeah, I could be!" He jumps up too, hunching and flexing his arms beneath his chest in an exaggerated wrestling pose. " _Rargh_!"

"Deeper!" Nat commands, stabbing a finger at him.

" _Raaaghh!_ "

"Ha-ha! _Yes_!" She and Goose whoop at each other. "Shaun, who's next?"

The group is all looking at him again. He blinks. When the idea had come to him, it hadn't been with himself as the leader, but Nat is beaming at him expectantly. He swallows hard, rallying himself.

"Okay, um—Domino!"

"Yeah?"

"Good guy or bad guy?" Shaun thinks he knows what Domino'll pick. Between his shrimpy stature and the pale piebald splotches on his face, he gets teased a lot.

True to expectations, Domino pumps his fist in the air and shouts "Bad guy!" with deep gusto.

"Then I dub thee Skullpocalypse," Shaun announces, mustering all the authority he can. Domino throws back his head and lets out a high-pitched, villainous laugh that has clearly been practiced.

"Oh! Oh! I wanna be Femme-Ra," says Exit, bouncing in place on the protruding rock where she has perched. "Only they don't know it's her at first, an' they think she's on their side, but then she reveals herself right when they need her th' most!" She waves her arms wildly over her head for emphasis and almost falls off the rock. Viola reaches out and grabs her before she faceplants into the leaf mold. Shaun can't stop himself from laughing, and she grins at him sheepishly.

"All right," he says, pondering this for a moment. "Then you'll be, um... you'll be _Ephemera_ , the queen of disguises, lying in wait for, for the moment to strike!"

"Hah! Yes!" Exit and Viola exchange high-fives. "What about you, Vi?"

"I'll be Tania Tanzia, Mistress of Mystery. I can do card tricks!"

"No you can't." Goose snorts. "You drop 'em every time."

Viola's face flushes as red as her hair. "I'm practicing, shut _up_!" she cries shrilly.

"Then that'll make Caden the Silver Shroud," Shaun says, stepping in before a full-blown scrap can break out. "That okay, Cade?"

"So long as I don't gotta kiss Viola," Caden says, side-eyeing the girl in question. Viola sniffs and draws herself up to her full, if diminutive, height.

"As if I'd ever want to kiss _you_! You pick your nose an' eat it, and everyone saw!"

"I did _not_!"

"Okay!" Once again Shaun plants himself squarely between his squabbling friends before their good-natured argument can come to decidedly bad-natured blows. "Nobody'll be kissing or hitting nobody, ' _specially_ not when we're not filming. Nat, can you start the script in the morning?"

"Prob'ly," says Nat cheerfully, drumming her heels against the stones of the wall. "I'll try and steal Pi's typewriter before she gets to it."

Privately, Shaun thinks it would be less dangerous to raid a Deathclaw nest wearing brahmin steaks tied around her arms, but he doesn't say anything. Instead he turns and begins pacing along the riverbank, scuffing small stones and scraps of trash out of the way with his sneakers without even noticing. It's funny, he thinks; when he first came to the Surface, he felt sick for days. Everything here is brown and filthy and dangerous, and a lot of it smells, and the water isn't safe to drink without treatment that makes it taste of copper. But here, his friends listen to his ideas and play along and give him ideas and friendship of their own. Here, he has friends at all. It's... a weird feeling. A good one.

"All right," he says finally. "We can't do much more tonight, and Mom'n Preston'll kill me if I'm out after sundown again."

"I mean," says Goose, "you _did_ kinda lead a dozen Mirelurks into town."

"It was _two_ ," Shaun retorts hotly, flushing, "and I _said_ I was sorry!"

"Yeah, yeah," Goose says, but he's laughing, and not in a mean way.

" _Anyway,_ what I'm sayin' is we should probably head back into town soon, but if you wanna meet here tomorrow after the morning bell, we can see where to go from here?"

"My mom can make costumes," says Exit, raising a hand as if she's in class. "You want I should ask her?"

"Excellent idea," he says, and she glows at the praise. "Tomorrow after breakfast then?"

There's a general round of agreement, and then the group disperses towards their respective homes. Shaun lingers in the gathering dusk for a moment longer, watching them. When Nat had invited him to come 'hang out,' as she'd put it, he'd expected it to be painful; expected to hang around on the fringes of their lives looking in for a while until it became too painful and he had to leave. But it hadn't. They... they had actually liked him. Maybe Mom had really been right about Surfacers after all.

Smiling to himself, his heart lighter than perhaps it's ever been, Shaun makes his way up the hill towards home.


End file.
